If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Intel's OpenCL Beignet Project Is Gaining Ground

08-18-2013, 01:30 AM

Phoronix: Intel's OpenCL Beignet Project Is Gaining Ground

Beignet is the controversial project to provide OpenCL/GPGPU support for modern Intel GPUs on Linux. Since the first Beignet release in April, this open-source Intel OpenCL project has been making lots of progress...

Comment

I'm half surprised they aren't making their own incompatible API that will "better fit Intel hardware".

They are aware such approach would only alienate developers, since they'd need to support yet another back-end for their software. Otherwise, they might follow that path (for example, if they were the ones drawing the path to follow, instead of just another walker on such path, like they do on other areas creating their own instruction sets everyone else has to follow to be compatible).
Also, I don't think it's a matter of not liking upstream (even if upstream would be perfect for them, I think they'd avoid it) but rather trying not to benefit their competitors from their work, partially (and only partially) killing the idea of open source development. Kind of what Mir with GPLv3 tries to do, IMO.
I do like them for focusing on free drivers, though.

Comment

If Intel does not like Gallium3D for whatever reason, then they are free to write their own things.

I find it funny when someone assumes a critic is equal to "OH, GOD, BAN THEM FROM LIFE!!!". They are free to do whatever they like, and people are free to like or dislike such things. And that leads to controversy. Some people will probably like it, and some people will probably dislike it. And there's people in between, like me.

On my post, which I wrote drunk and missed a few facts, I want to point out that another reason I didn't talk about is the fact that they already invested lots of work on their classic mesa driver, so it's normal they don't want to ditch it. The corporate reasons are still something pretty much likely, and partially fair to the companies (probably not the users, but to the companies, since they don't help Intel either when working on their closed source drivers). And considering how they help a lot on infrastructure pieces, they do help a lot of competitors' products users.

Comment

I suspect that this is at least partially to support embedded systems. Having OpenCL makes a lot of sense for some embedded applications and linking in vendor specific libraries (e.g. Intel's ipp and mkl) that match the target CPU you've picked is a common approach. Since AMD has been implementing OpenCL on their Fusion APUs perhaps Intel is getting some market pressure to do something similar. Nvidia's CUDA is the 800lb proprietary gorilla here so I fail to see how supporting an open API is a bad thing. Also, see the article 'Intel's Mesa Team Has Grown About 10x In Three Years'. Its possible we're seeing disjoint pieces of some larger strategy so its WAY to soon to grab out pitchforks and storm the castle over this.